


Busy Making Other Plans

by teyla



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Bad Communication, Idiots in Love, Kid Fic, Light Angst, M/M, Major Life Decisions, Minor Canonical Character(s), Some Humor, commitment issues, minor sick!fic subplot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-02 15:01:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11511807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teyla/pseuds/teyla
Summary: “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.” Or: the one in which Malcolm suddenly,inexplicably, sees himself compelled to make some major personal life decisions.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's kidfic! Blame Neery, she requested it as a reward for beta'ing. This one was also beta'ed by Neery, as well as Sita Z and Daphnie1. Thank you guys for cleaning this up!
> 
> This is set somewhere in the years between 2x01 and the specials. The fic itself is more or less canon compliant. The epilogue takes place in a magic future where Malcolm's party won the series 3 election and Nicola is a (competent!) PM.
> 
> Kudos are great, comments are greater. Enjoy!

Malcolm practices an open-door policy at the office. He’s not afraid of confrontation (quite the opposite), and he’d rather be disturbed and in the know than left alone and out of the loop.

He’s never regretted this approach, not until in the middle of him dealing with a semi-disastrous MP fuck-up, Jamie bursts into his office to shove a screaming child into his arms.

He drops his BlackBerry. That’s how fucking startled he is.

“What—”

“Two seconds, Malc. I have to go deal with the thing, I’ll be there in two shakes.”

And he’s off to deal with the thing. Malcolm stares at the tiny, wailing human in his arms. It’s fucking _loud_.

“Sa-am! _SAM_!”

\------

Jamie is not there in two shakes. Granted, Malcolm doesn’t know the official time span constituting a shake, but Jamie’s not back yet _thirty fucking minutes later_ , which are no two shakes in anyone’s book.

It’s Sam’s fucking day off. He didn’t remember that until he’d already prowled most of the floor with a screaming, squirming toddler in his arms. He’s pretty sure that at this point, all of Whitehall knows about this. There’s pictures, probably. He’s going to fucking skin Jamie alive.

He’s got to give it to the wee noisy fuck, she’s got stamina. He thinks it's a she. Who the fuck knows; tiny humans all look alike. This one’s got a head as red as a strawberry, a vocabulary consisting solely of the word "no", and a voice that hasn’t given out yet.

Putting it down is out of the question. Malcolm tried, and almost got strangled for his trouble when the kid grabbed his tie and held on for dear life. So he’s perched on the edge of his desk, tries to ignore the snot and the tears soaking into his suit jacket as he writes emails one-handedly on his phone and barely keeps himself from clamping the other over the baby’s mouth.

“What do I have to do to make you fucking shut up?” he asks about twenty minutes in. “I’m ready to negotiate, just state your fucking demands, all right?”

He’s pretty sure if the baby could speak, it’d demand a clean diaper. He’d be more than willing to provide if he had one; the smell of shit is _overwhelming_.

_I’m going to fucking kill you_. Yet another text to Jamie, which he knows is going to go ignored, along with the other six he’s sent, and the numerous calls he’s placed. He doesn’t even know why Jamie would _have_ a baby. It’s not like they’re that easy to come by if you’re a bloke.

Nobody makes use of the open-door policy in his hour of need, which Malcolm knows is no fucking coincidence. At least that means that when the door eventually does fly open, he’s reasonably sure it’s Jamie before he actually sees him.

“About _fucking_ time!”

“Hey.” Jamie’s out of breath, hair dishevelled, tie askew. He looks _stressed_ , but Malcolm has no sympathy. “Sorry, that took longer than—”

“Take the fucking—” He holds out the infant, twists to extricate himself from tie-grabbing fingers. “ _Take it_.”

Jamie does, scoops the baby into his arms as if he does this kind of thing every day. “Hey, hey. It’s all right.”

It’s a weird fucking sight. Jamie’s not what anyone would call a gentle soul, even if Malcolm knows that half of what comes across as Jamie being aggressive is really just Jamie being enthusiastic. He’s not being either, right now. He runs a hand over the baby’s head, adopts a soothing, humming tone. “Shh, it’s all right. We’ll sort it, yeah? Don’t cry.”

Malcolm steps over to his desk, picks up his phone to occupy his hands and prevent Jamie attempting to give the child _back_. “Care to explain what the _fuck_ is going on?”

Jamie winces as the wee lass’ squirming lands a kick into his side. “She’s Simon’s.”

That explains _nothing_. Jamie rolls his eyes. “My _brother_.”

“Which one? You’ve got like twenty.”

“I do not.” Jamie wrinkles his nose as he picks up on the shit aroma. He almost has to shout to make himself heard. “He’s six years younger, got this beard. His wife died.”

“Right.” Malcolm remembers that, the phone call that came in late one night a few months ago. It had Jamie pacing in the sitting room and come back to bed with his hair dishevelled and his eyes too bright. He took a plane up to Glasgow to attend the funeral a few days later. “I didn’t know they’d had a bairn.”

Jamie’s too preoccupied to reply. “I’ve got to change her,” he says, and again sounds like he does this kind of thing all the fucking time. “I’ll just quickly use your cupboard—” and he goes for the door next to Malcolm’s desk.

Malcolm steps in front of it. “The fuck you will.” He’s not entirely sure why he doesn’t want Jamie to use the cupboard, except that _changing babies_ is not what Jamie’s in Number 10 Downing Street for. “You still haven’t told me what the fuck’s going on. ‘It’s Simon’s’, all right, so why isn’t _Simon_ the one changing the shitty diaper?”

“He—” Jamie stops a mere split-second before walking straight into Malcolm, and glares. “He’s fucking unavailable, all right?”

“Fucking unavailable? He’s the fucking _father_!”

“Jesus, Malc—get out of the fucking way! I need to change her.”

Jamie looks ready to land a kick against his kneecap or, worse, hand him the baby again, so Malcolm concedes and steps aside. “Doesn’t your entire family live up in Glasgow? Are you that great a fucking babysitter that he’s brought his child all the way down to London just to put it in your tender fucking care?”

The kid doesn’t approve of their raised voices, judging by the way the screaming’s intensified. Jamie grimaces and pushes past. “He’s _in_ fucking London! He’s here for a legal thing. Will you get the diaper bag?”

“What fucking diaper bag?”

It's sitting next to the doorway, where Jamie must have deposited it earlier. Malcolm gets it for him, but he doesn’t stick around to watch the process. On the list of disgusting things the human body produces, excrement is way up at the top. He’d much rather deal with the adult babies comprising the government of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. At least most of them know how to wipe their own arses.

\------

It’s a late one that day, as most of Malcolm’s workdays tend to be. He arrives at his house in Islington around half ten, and hides a yawn in the bulk of his scarf as he digs for his keys.

The door swings open before he can find them, and his heart nearly stops.

“Shite—”

He manages to catch himself just before tripping backwards down the steps. Jamie’s in the doorway, looking almost as startled.

“Jesus, Malc, watch it!”

“What the _fuck_?”

Jamie being here isn’t, in itself, unexpected. They’ve been cohabiting ever since Jamie’s flat lease ran out a couple of months ago. He says he’s been too busy to look for a new place, but Malcolm suspects ulterior motives. Jamie’s complained more than once about Malcolm’s insistence they keep separate flats, says that there’s no point in him paying exorbitant London rent on a place he sleeps in once a month. Malcolm’s told him that the _point_ is to keep the nature of their relationship out of the press and curious ears, but as usual, Jamie’s not as concerned about that as he should be.

He has to admit that it’s been sort of nice having Jamie around. It’s a big fucking house; it gets really empty when he’s here on his own. Right now, though, everything about Jamie’s demeanour says ‘unpleasant surprise’, and Malcolm fucking hates surprises even when they’re good ones.

“All right, don’t freak out, yeah?”

Malcolm glares and pushes past. “About fucking what?”

Jamie’s lost his suit jacket and tie, rolled up his shirt sleeves, but otherwise, he’s still dressed in his office clothes. His hair’s all over the place, and there’s a stain on his shoulder that Malcolm doesn’t want to look at too closely.

“I’ve got Gracie upstairs.”

Jamie says it looking sort of contrite. He says it like it should _mean_ something to Malcolm.

“Who the fuck is Gracie?”

“My _niece_.” Not contrite now, just exasperated. “You fucking met her earlier today, remember?”

“You—” Malcolm’s at a loss for words, and covers it by shrugging out of his coat. “You brought a fucking baby into _my house_?”

“Shh!”

He’s being shushed, and that doesn’t make _sense_ ; he wasn’t even properly shouting. It’s a major fucking concession, the way he keeps his voice down as he continues. “Why's she still with you? Your brother can’t still be at the fucking court; they don’t _do_ office hours at night.”

“He just needs some fucking time, all right?” Jamie glares. “I'm looking after her, just for a week or so, until—”

“A _week_?” That’s not quiet anymore, but nobody could be expected to react calmly to an outrage like that. “You’re not turning my house into a fucking day care centre for a _week_!”

Jamie’s about to reply when there's a thump from upstairs, followed by a wail. Jamie’s shoulders sag. “Fucking _great_ , Malc. Thanks a lot.”

He makes off up the stairs. Malcolm follows him on his heel. “We’ve got three major policy announcements this week, they’re launching that new fucking education programme in Cardiff on Wednesday, and Thursday’s fucking Cliff Gardener’s divorce trial hearing. I do not have time for this, and neither, I should mention, do _you_!”

Jamie heads into the bedroom, turns on the light. There’s a rumpled nest of blankets in the centre of the bed. It's empty. The child’s on the floor (that explains the thump), seemingly unhurt as she anxiously waves her arms and bounces on her diapered butt. She’s crying again, and looks pretty fucking unhappy.

Malcolm relates. “Did you figure I just wouldn’t sleep at all tonight? That’s _my_ fucking bed!”

“Jesus _Christ_.” Jamie’s scoops her up once more, checks her over to make sure she didn’t hurt herself. At least there’s no smell of shit this time. “Stop being such a massive precious cunt about this, all right? You don’t need to fucking concern yourself, just go sleep in the guest room or summat. I’ve _got_ this.”

And with that, Malcolm’s absolved of all responsibility. He’s not protesting—except that this is Jamie sending him away, and Jamie’s not supposed to do that. “Can I count on you to be doing your job while—” and he waves his hand at the wailing bundle in Jamie’s arms.

Jamie’s gently rocking her, a stark contrast to the murderous glare he sends across the room. “When have I ever _not_ done my job? I’ll fucking work from home, unless _my boss_ has a fucking problem with it.”

“ _Your boss_ doesn’t care where you are when you’re working, as long as the fucking work gets done.”

“Good. All right. It’s settled, then.” Jamie shifts the baby in his arms, starts walking up and down the foot of the bed. “Good _night_ , Malcolm.”

He’s being chucked out of his own bedroom; that’s what it’s fucking come to. But continuing this fight doesn’t sound like great fun, either. It’s _late_ , so he heads into the guest room and makes up the bed.

It’s fucking unfamiliar, with a weird lumpy pillow that he really should replace at some point, but it’s not the worst night’s sleep he’s had.

\------

Jamie doesn’t want his help, so Malcolm does his best to give him space. It’s not difficult; Malcolm tends to spend most of his time at the office, anyway. But not all encounters can be avoided.

There’s the time he enters the bathroom early one morning to be greeted by the pungent odour of shit, a stain-smeared diaper on the floor, and Jamie hosing down the (naturally screaming) toddler in the shower, looking like he could use a good hosing down himself. There’s the time (that _same fucking day_ ) Malcolm arrives home to find his sofa stripped of its cover, the smell of stale porridge in the air, and Jamie on all fours scrubbing a moist, chunky, _disgusting_ stain out of the upholstery. There’s the time he goes to plug in his phone to find a child safety contraption covering the sockets that presumably requires NASA training to be circumvented, the time he finds twines of string tying shut all cupboards below hip-level, and the time he almost trips down the stairs because his foot gets stuck in the makeshift cardboard gate Jamie’s installed at the top.

All loose items disappear from the bottom shelves, and two mugs, three glasses, and four plates go missing. Malcolm never sees any broken shards, but he fucking _knows_ how many dishes he’s got in his kitchen. On the third day (all of this unfolds within a terrifyingly short amount of time), a neon-coloured set of plastic bowls appears on the kitchen counter. Plastic dishes, as far as Malcolm’s concerned, are the height of uncivilised living, but for the sake of his nice stuff, he doesn’t put them straight in the bin.

Jamie doesn’t speak to him much. Malcolm’s not sure if he’s being given the cold shoulder, or if Jamie’s just too preoccupied with his babysitting duties. It happens twice that Malcolm calls him during the workday and gets the click-beep of a rejected call. Most other times, Jamie simply doesn’t pick up. When Jamie is reachable, he sounds frayed, slightly panicked, and in no state to be making governmental PR decisions. Before long, Malcolm stops trying, and recruits Frank to fill in as his second-in-command.

He holds back about reading Jamie the riot act, though. Family emergencies happen to the best of people, after all, and judging by the frazzled terror in Jamie’s eyes, he’d rather be dealing with politics than babies, too. Malcolm thinks himself quite benevolent when he decides to ignore that Jamie ‘working from home’ constitutes Jamie not working at all. At least this way, they all get to keep their dignity, and once the week is over and Simon’s reclaimed his hellspawn, they can go back to business as usual.

\------

It’s the fourth night that Malcolm’s sleeping in the guest bedroom (he’s got used to the pillow at this point) when he’s woken up by the creak of the door.

He blinks at the dark silhouette in the doorway, drops his eyes to the alarm clock. It’s two-thirty in the morning.

He manages a grunt. “What?”

Jamie turns on the night lamp, makes Malcolm squint against the glare. He’s still dressed; lost his tie but kept his shirt, which is rumpled and unbuttoned at the top to expose a glimpse of chest. His hair’s a mess, and his eyes are showing a lot of white, but it’s the panicked twist of his lips that makes Malcolm sit up, push the blanket aside. “What is it?”

“She’s fucking dying.” Jamie’s voice is shaky, sort of high-pitched. Malcolm’s heard him sound like that on only one other occasion, and it wasn’t a good one. “She sounds like she’s fucking dying, Malc, I don’t know what to do.”

He gets out of bed, forgoes his slippers as he pushes past Jamie to head for the bedroom. “She’s not fucking dying.” He has nothing to base this on, except that as much as he’s hated the inconvenience of Jamie’s niece in his life, she’s not going to _die_ in his house.

He understands what Jamie’s talking about when he comes up to the bedroom door. In the dimly lit room, Gracie’s curled up in her nest in the centre of the bed. She’s crying—of course she is, it’s her fucking default state—but it’s not normal crying: it’s thin, wheezy whistles, followed by breathless sobs strangled by laborious attempts to draw air. She _does_ sound like she’s fucking dying. “Jesus Christ.”

He hasn’t been in the bedroom in a while. It’s a fucking mess (clothes scattered everywhere, a messy changing mat on the dresser, half the bookshelf spilled on the floor) and there’s a ripe smell hanging about. Right now, though, these things barely register. “Has she got asthma?”

“No. I don’t think so.” Jamie sits on the bed, and the baby stretches her chubby arms out for him as the wail-wheezing intensifies. He pulls her into his lap, puts the back of his hand against her forehead. “She’s had a cold. This is not supposed to be happening, Malc. Bairns aren’t meant to _sound_ like this.”

He sounds fucking _freaked out_ , and Malcolm feels a twinge of discomfort in his gut. He’s come to accept that Jamie’s an exception to most of his rules (‘don’t mix sex and work’, ‘don’t fuck anyone on a regular basis unless you’re going to marry them’, ‘make sure to keep anyone you’re fucking but aren’t married to out of your personal space’), but even Jamie shouldn’t be an exception to the rule Malcolm has about children: he doesn’t want anything to do with them, and he’s not going to let anyone put him in a position of responsibility for them.

Except this is Jamie completely out of his depth, and Jamie’s never learned that when you’re out of your depth, you cut your losses and run. Jamie’s just going to _keep trying_ , and Malcolm can’t stand by and watch. He never could.

“All right,” he says, goes to the wardrobe to hunt for jeans and a jumper. “So we take her to A&E. Get your stuff.”

Jamie looks as hesitant as he does relieved. “You’ve got to be in the office in a few hours.”

“Right,” and he waves a hand in direction of the guest room, “I’m just going to fucking toddle off and go back to sleep while a small child’s suffocating in my bedroom. That’s fucking likely. Get your _stuff_.”

Jamie does. Malcolm’s seen him in and out of the house a few times this past week, lugging bags stuffed full of what seemed like supplies for a month, rather than a two-hour trip to the shops. There’s the diaper bag, another bag with bottles and food supplies, and an assortment of other things Malcolm doesn’t care enough to identify. Once Jamie’s packed it all up, it’s like they’re fucking New World settlers ready to take on the North American Cordillera.

Malcolm grabs the bags and leaves Jamie to carrying the wheezing, weeping child.

There’s no cab nearby, so they take Jamie’s car. It’s apparently equipped with a toddler seat these days. Jamie’s in the back with Gracie while Malcolm navigates London’s narrow streets.

At A&E, he doesn’t even try to find a parking space; just backs up onto the pavement and leaves the car sitting under some trees. They want to write him a ticket, they’re fucking welcome to. They’ll be paying for it themselves; his salary comes out of the tax bucket, after all.

Like most hospital floors, the triage room is a space of creepy, liminal gloom. Grey plastic chairs barely contrast against grey walls and seat an assortment of the sick, the tired, and the suffering. Malcolm keeps a careful distance between himself and any other living person as he follows Jamie to the glass-encapsulated nurse's desk.

‘Breathing difficulties’ seems to be a magic word that skips them ahead of the queue. Any other day, that’d be great news (as far as Malcolm’s concerned, waiting rooms are only marginally less torturous than electric chairs), but under the circumstances, it’s fucking ominous. He eyes the child, who’s resting her grubby cheek on Jamie’s shoulder, greasy hair sticking up, every facial orifice leaking either tears, snot, or saliva. She’s uttering breathless whimpers interspersed with the occasional "no". It’s a picture of misery if he’s ever seen one.

“This way.” A blonde woman clad in bright red scrubs and half a head shorter than Jamie takes the chart from the nurse and herds them towards an exam room. “Are you the fathers?”

“ _No_.” Malcolm’s stomach flips, and it has nothing to do with the fact that a small child may be expiring in his presence. “No, we are not. Do not put that on any of your fucking forms, all right?”

The look she gives him suggests that she doesn’t approve of _any_ of the words he just said. “We don’t. I just need to know who the primary caregiver is.”

“I am,” Jamie says. He sounds a bit cross. “He’s just here to carry the fucking bags.” 

Normally, Malcolm would be insulted, but with this, he’s perfectly content to be the fucking diaper caddie. The woman (presumably the doctor) doesn’t look happy with that answer, though.

“So you _are_ the father?”

“Uncle. Her father’s not—he’s not available. I’m taking care of her.”

That’s not making it better; the doctor seems even more sceptical now. “Have you called him yet? Or her mother?”

“She’s not—it’s just her da. He’s not available right now. I’ll call him first thing in the morning.”

“All right.” The doctor still doesn’t look quite convinced (Malcolm can’t blame her; after that display of evasiveness, he's got a few questions himself), but she waves them into the exam room. Malcolm stands to the side between a flimsy-looking stool and a medicine cabinet as the doctor instructs Jamie to put the baby down on the exam table.

It’s easier said than done. Breathing difficulties or no, Gracie manages a respectable, high-pitched scream as she holds on to Jamie’s shirt collar. Jamie twists and tries to dodge, but it takes the doctor peeling apart tiny fingers before Jamie can put the baby down.

“Shh, darling,” he says, catches the child’s flailing hands in his own as he stands against the table to keep her from toppling to the floor. “Calm down, all right? It’ll be okay. The doctor’s just going to take a look at your breathing, yeah?”

Having her hands held makes the kid wail louder. If it weren’t for the whistling wheezes interrupting her screams, Malcolm would be tempted to assume she’s been faking the breathing issues.

“I really need her to be quiet while I listen to her chest,” the doctor says, hooks a stethoscope into her ears. “Have you got any of her toys with you?”

“Aw, fuck. No.” Jamie looks as guilt-stricken as a nun caught in flagrante with the town drunk, but the doctor seems unbothered as she fishes something out from under the exam table.

“Let’s try this, then. Come over here,” and she waves the thing at Malcolm. “Try and distract her.”

The _thing_ is a fucking bubble maker. The only reason he knows that is because his niece used to love them, and he’s tripped over more than one while visiting her and Annie up in Hatfield. Knowing what it is means he wants to touch it _even less_ —Fi wasn’t above shoving hers halfway into her mouth and drooling all over it like a dog over its favourite chew toy. Even the memory’s disgusting, but at least Fi’s family. _This_ bubble maker has probably been drooled on by some infant who’ll turn out to be patient zero of the next cholera epidemic.

“Malc, come on. _Please_.”

Jamie’s looking at him with that wide-eyed fucking _look_ he does, and Malcolm sneers. “I did not fucking sign up for this.” But he takes the fucking thing from the doctor anyway. At least it’s not damp.

His first attempt to produce bubbles results in no more than a sad ripple in the soap; his second makes the film pop and spatters his hand in itchy liquid. It’s the third that does the trick. Four a.m. in A&E or not, he has to admit that these bubbles are very fucking sparkly.

Gracie agrees. Chubby fingers reach for floating rainbow orbs, and the noise tapers out. Wonders never fucking cease.

“There we go,” the doctor says, slips the stethoscope under Gracie’s shirt, and shifts seamlessly into a sort of baby-talk voice Malcolm thought was reserved for the fucking Supernanny. "There we go, sweetheart, let's have a look at you—yeah, that's viral wheeze all right," and she’s back to sounding like someone whose job includes literal life-and-death decisions. “I know it looks scary, but don't worry. Usually they're right as rain after some inhalers.”

“Usually.” Malcolm glances up from his monumental bubble task. “What about fucking _un_ usually?”

“If the inhalers don’t work, there’s other things we can try.”

That’s a fucking ominous statement if he’s ever heard one, but a side-glance at Jamie makes him refrain from probing further. Jamie looks freaked as all fuck as it is, patches of red on pale cheeks, eyes wide and shiny. “All right. Inhalers it is, then.”

First, though, it’s bubbles, because the last one’s popped and Gracie’s waving her arms and letting out a threatening whine. Malcolm’s getting the hang of it now, and even manages to blow a fairly big one that floats all the way down to the floor before it pops and leaves a damp spot on the linoleum.

If someone slips and falls in that, he’s not paying the lawsuit.

Finally, the nurse shows up, carrying a medical gadget that looks like a cross between a gas mask and a scuba diving tank. There’s more cooing and baby-talk as they stick the thing right onto the kid’s face, which ruins all of Malcolm’s good work and unleashes an unholy hell of insistent, wailing "no"s. Jamie’s doing his best to hold on to the child, and it’s like watching someone trying to wrestle down a drunk in a Motherwell pub on Guy Fawkes Day.

“Jesus _fuck_ ,” and he glares across at Malcolm. “Do the fucking bubbles, Malc, will you?”

It’s the last thing he ever expected to be told in that tone of voice (it’s the kind of tone you’d use, presumably, to order someone to enter nuclear launch codes into a missile guidance system), but he glares back and complies.

What the fuck else is he gonna do.

\------

The doctor orders three rounds of ten inhalations each, unperturbed by Gracie's deafening protests. Even the bubbles stop being exciting halfway through, and by the end of it, Malcolm feels sick. There's bullying people at Number 10, where everyone's heart is shrivelled to a dried-up pea, anyway, and then there's torturing small children who don't understand what's happening to them. The former’s quite satisfactory, the latter _fucking sucks_. 

Turns out that skipping the queue doesn't mean they're not still going to have to spend an ungodly amount of time in the waiting room. Gracie's fine now, she's breathing normally (or, well, she's hyperventilating, but that's from crying), but the doctor says she needs to be kept an eye on.

"Three hours," she says, "just to make sure it doesn't come back. After that it should be fine for you to head on home."

Fucking sadistic doctor twat.

The room's mostly cleared since they came in; apparently, this is a slow time of day (night) even in A&E. They sit in a corner, plastic chairs creaking underneath. Jamie’s got Gracie in his lap, arms wrapped around her as her hitching breaths slowly even out. He’s staring at empty air, eyes glassy and eyelids sagging, and he’s being really fucking quiet.

It’s weird. Jamie doesn’t _do_ quiet.

“Hey,” Malcolm says after a while when the silence becomes too discomfiting. There’s no reaction. “ _Hey_.”

Jamie looks around, and it’s like a watching a slow-motion effect in a film. “What?”

He looks like _shit_. Perhaps Malcolm should’ve noticed earlier, but he blamed Jamie’s pallor, the shine in his eyes, and the sweaty tangles sticking to his forehead on stress. Jamie _has_ been really fucking stressed out this past week. But what they’re doing right now isn’t stressful, just boring, and Jamie’s still got even paler since sitting down. “Are you ill? You’re fucking ill.”

Jamie just blinks in that over-exaggerated special effect way. Malcolm swears under his breath and puts the back of his hand against Jamie’s forehead. It’s like touching a fucking stove, one that’s covered in clammy sweat. “For fuck’s sake—“

“Get off.” Jamie pulls back, shakes his head like he’s trying to clear his vision. “I’m fucking fine.”

“It’s really fucking obvious that you’re not. Did you catch whatever she’s got?” Malcolm frowns, and remembers an argument they had a few months ago. Less of an argument, really, and more Malcolm trying to get Jamie to be precautious for once in his life, and Jamie waving him off. “Did you ever get your flu jab done?”

Jamie mumbles something unintelligible.

“What?”

“I said _no_ , I fucking _didn’t_.” The baby’s fallen asleep at this point, and Jamie shifts her up for a better hold. “Feel free to fucking gloat, or whatever. I really don’t got time for this.”

“For what, being ill?”

“That, too.”

Malcolm wants to know what that’s supposed to mean, if Jamie is saying he’s not got time for _Malcolm_ (which would be preposterous as well as a little hurtful, as loath as he is to admit that even in the privacy of his own head), but Jamie doesn’t seem like he’s up for an argument. Malcolm digs his phone from his pocket.

“I’m not going in tomorrow.” His lips twist as he realises what he said. “ _Today_. I’m putting Frank in charge.” ‘You’d better fucking appreciate it’ is what he doesn’t say, but Jamie just shrugs, hugs Gracie closer, and closes his eyes.

Malcolm writes all necessary emails, puts the phone away, and settles down to observe the clock through a narrow squint. Two more hours.

He really fucking hates this.


	2. Chapter 2

When A&E finally gives them the all clear to leave, the car’s gone. They must’ve fucking towed it; Malcolm didn’t even know they _did_ that in the middle of the night.

Neither of them has the wherewithal to kick up a fuss; they simply get into one of the cabs sitting at the stand right outside. Morning rush hour congests the streets, and the way back to Islington takes twice as long as it should. About halfway, Malcolm plucks the snoozing baby from Jamie’s waning grip to prevent her toppling to the floor of the cab. Jamie grunts, blinks his glassy eyes open for a moment, but doesn’t protest.

All of this just fucking figures. How he ever thought things would turn out any other way than this, Malcolm has no idea.

At home, he shoos Jamie upstairs to the guest room. Lie the fuck down, he tells him, before you fall down. Jamie wants to argue, he can tell, but the fact that he can’t effectively manage clearly means that he shouldn’t be trying. He closes the guest room door in Jamie’s face, then heads back downstairs where he’s deposited the sleeping baby on the sofa.

He supposes he’s on fucking babysitting duties now.

For the first few hours, it’s not particularly strenuous. He sits down in an armchair with a book, well-intentioned to keep an eye on Gracie until she wakes up. Twenty minutes later, the book’s fallen shut in his lap and he’s asleep.

A loud crash jerks him awake, followed by a startled, angry wail. He swears and bangs his shin on the couch table as he stumbles in the direction of the noise.

Gracie's made her way to the dining area in front of the big window wall that faces the terrace. He has no idea _how_ she made her way; if she walked or crawled—all he’s ever seen her do is sit, as she’s doing right now, on the floor and facing a chair that's tipped over into the window. The glass is not shattered (silver lining), but there's spidery cracks spreading out from where the corner of the chair hit the pane. 

“Oh, well fucking done, you—” He doesn't have a child-appropriate term to call her, especially not when she's looking at him with tears clinging to her lashes, her mouth twisted in startled misery. She sort of looks like Jamie, a bit. She's got the same giant blue eyes. He squints down at her. “Did you hurt yourself?”

She makes a nonverbal sound of indignation and stretches her arms out. He sighs and picks her up, winces at the spasm in his back. “What was the plan here, a fucking prison break? I'm more than happy to let you out, but I've got a feeling you've got nowhere much to go.”

Judging by the way she's staring at him, it’s the first time anyone's spoken to her like a normal fucking person. He pulls up an eyebrow. “You want babytalk, I can take you back to A&E.”

Chubby fingers grab his ear and give it a good yank. It’s as startling as it’s painful, and he almost drops her as he ducks and swears. “Jesus _fuck_! Stop that!”

She doesn’t seem inclined, squirms and kicks her legs and makes herself a right annoyance to hold on to. He swears again and lowers her to the ground, where she more or less securely lands on her feet. Looks like walking _is_ part of her skill set—as well as running. With surprising speed, she toddles over to one of the kitchen cupboards and slams into it like a rugby player doing a tackle.

“Gaaargh!”

With a different pitch, the utterance would’ve done a Viking proud. He heads over to the counter, where Gracie is now slamming her palms against the cupboard door. “What do you need?”

“Gaaaaaargh!”

The noise takes on a whining twinge, and Malcolm rubs a hand over his face. This is not the sort of thing he’d normally want to be doing on barely three hours of sleep. Granted, it’s not the sort of thing he _ever_ wants to be doing. “Word of advice, kid, expand your fucking vocabulary. It helps with communication.”

She’s stretching, trying to reach something up on the counter. He follows her fingers’ direction and spots the atrocious fucking plastic bowls. He picks up the top one (it’s an eye-gouging green) and holds it up. “Breakfast?”

Her flapping arms and happy gurgling seem like a confirmation, which leaves him with the question of what babies eat. Formula, he supposes, but he hasn’t seen any appear in the fridge or the cupboards. If she’s walking, she may be old enough for real food.

The gurgling’s turning into decidedly less happy-sounding whines, and she’s tugging on his trouser leg, fixated on the bowl. “There’s nothing in it, sweetheart.” He turns it upside down to show her. “I’m still working on that part.”

The whining intensifies, and so does the reaching, until he hands over the bowl. Gracie checks the contents, finds them non-existent, and sends the bowl flying as she waves her arms and bursts into tears.

Fucking great.

He finds some vanilla yoghurt in the fridge, and a satsuma in the bowl on the counter. Dairy and fruit seem baby-appropriate enough. Sitting at the table with Gracie in his lap, he learns that the hand-eye coordination involved in using a spoon is much more difficult than he ever imagined. Also, Gracie seems to prefer the satsuma peels over the fruit itself.

“You’re not supposed to eat those, you know. They’ve got pesticides all over.”

Gracie coos and chomps down on the peel, and Malcolm supposes that a bit of pesticide’s really never hurt anyone.

After breakfast, they spend some unhappy minutes in the bathroom (Gracie’s covered in orange satsuma juice, and apparently feels about water the same way she does about untimely delivered breakfast), before Malcolm acknowledges defeat and accepts that an orange child is better than a screaming one. He’s in the process of figuring out if there’s anything in his sitting room that could serve as a suitably distracting toy when his phone rings.

“Tucker.”

“ _Malcolm_.” Nicholson’s nasal greeting doesn’t even make him wince. “What strange misfortune has befallen you that Number 10 is deprived of your incandescence today?”

All right, perhaps he’s wincing a little. He takes a few steps away from Gracie—part force of habit, part the hope that he’ll be able to avoid Nicholson picking up on background gurgling and starting to ask awkward questions. “Turns out even I have a life that occasionally happens. What do you need, Julius?”

“Only a minute of your time, Malcolm, then I’ll be out of your hair, no matter how jealous I am of your foliage.”

He’s not slept anywhere near enough to deal with this gracefully. Luckily, Julius continues without prompting. Apparently the PM’s back to being concerned about a cultural preservation policy he decided to endorse two days ago, just in time to put it into a speech attended by every English Heritage jobby in London. He wants shade thrown at it now, but it can’t look like it came from the Party, but they can’t look weak and give it to the opposition, either, etcetera, etcetera. Malcolm interrupts Julius halfway through.

“Yes, yes, all right. Tell the PM not to worry, it’s as good as done.”

“Will you be gracing us with your presence after all?”

“For this? No.” Malcolm snorts; he’s not even sure why Julius bothered to call him. His team isn’t _entirely_ incompetent, after all. “Call me again when Number 10’s on fire, then I’ll consider it.”

“Oh my, Malcolm. I wish you the best of luck with whatever is keeping your attention. You’re not ill, God forbid?”

Simple curiosity, _that’s_ why the nosy fucker’s calling him. “I’m perfect, thanks for asking. Speak soon, Julius.”

“I live in hope.”

He doesn’t even bother with the laptop, just uses the phone and a trusty sockpuppet account to post a couple of combative entries to a mailing list full of Oxbridge historians. The discussion he’ll shake loose is the exact thing to bring to the _Guardian_ ’s attention later and create that anonymous shade the PM has asked for. All in five minutes’ work.

He presses “send”, feels quite satisfied with himself, and turns around to find Gracie gone.

It should be fucking impossible for her to be gone. It’s an open plan sitting room; there’s not really anywhere to hide.

“Gracie?” He has no idea if she even knows that that’s her name; he’s never tried using it with her. “Gracie! Where the fuck are you?”

The kitchen’s empty, and so is the dining area. She’s not in the hallway or near the coat rack, and now he’s almost out of accessible downstairs places to check, so he’s getting properly worried. Can she open doors? She’s too fucking _short_ to open doors. He checks in the office, anyway, but no luck.

“For fuck’s sake—”

The stairs are barricaded with a cardboard construction that Jamie installed. It looks intact, but he checks it anyway. He checks all windows and doors, then double-checks all the rooms, and then has to stop and take a deep breath. Well fucking done; he’s managed to lose Jamie’s bairn less than half a day in.

“We’re not playing hide-and-seek, Gracie, it’s not fucking play time. Where the fuck are you?”

A loud clanging from the kitchen makes him jump. He heads back in there, but it’s still empty. It takes him a moment to notice one of the cupboards standing slightly ajar. He pulls it open all the way, squints—and there she is, half-hidden behind a large soup pot. She’s holding a cheese grater and is making tiny babbling noises as she trails her fingers down the grate.

The blunt edge of it, thank God.

“Jesus fucking Christ.” He’s about to yank the utensil from her hands, but the way her eyes widen stops him. He doesn’t want the wailing to start up again, so instead of yanking, he wriggles imperious fingers. “Give me that. That is _not_ a toy.”

Something gets lost in translation. Gracie laughs and waves her arms, bangs the grater against the pot. The cupboard amplifies the clanging, and Malcolm winces. “For fuck’s sake— _no_!” Perhaps he just needs to keep it simple; she should know yes and no, right? “No, Gracie! Give it to me.”

Shouting isn’t the way to go. The corners of her mouth pull down, and she bursts into tears.

Times like these, Malcolm can feel every single one of his forty-five-plus years.

“Sweetheart—come on.” He sits down on the floor, scoots as close to the cupboard as possible and ducks his head to peer into it. “It's dangerous, all right? It’s a cheese grater, and your fingers are so fucking small, you’re going to grate them right off. Give it to me, yeah?”

She decides it's time for a retreat, and drops the grater to free her hands for crawling. He fishes it out, puts it on the counter. "Good. Thank you. You want to come out now?"

She doesn’t.

The counter, and with it the cupboard, bend around a corner which houses a carousel shelf. It's great, provides lots of storage, except he doesn't own enough kitchen utensils to fill it all up. The back is entirely empty, and inaccessible unless you spin the back to the front.

He watches the bulk of her diapered butt disappear into the corner. His fingers itch like _hell_ to spin the shelf, but there is no way that won't end with her head smacking against one of the more solid bits of cupboard. "Gracie, _please_. Just—what's the fucking plan here?"

Their communications barrier is still firmly in place, of course, so reasonable negotiation is out. Malcolm spends the next fifteen minutes trying to sweet-talk Gracie like a startled deer. He’s never had much luck with animals (there’s a reason he doesn’t own a pet, and it’s not just that the shedding would drive him mad), and he’s not having much luck with this—even though Gracie doesn’t seem particularly _happy_ in the cupboard; her whining increases incrementally, and there’s a lot of “no” going on.

“All right,” he says eventually, gets to his feet. “You’re welcome to come out any time you want. When you do, I’ll be in the sitting room.”

He’s barely out of her field of vision when the sounds from the cupboard get louder, angrier, and a banging of pots precedes Gracie’s exit from the cupboard. He really should’ve tried this earlier.

She crawls up to him, gives him a stare. He stares back, watches her disgruntled squint get narrower. A moment later, there's a fart, and an acrid smell wafts in his direction.

He immediately feels like retching. “Oh, fucking great.”

\------

By the time the day winds down, Malcolm has confirmed his long-standing hypothesis that anyone willingly choosing to become a parent is a danger to themselves and others and needs to be fucking sectioned under the mental health act.

Over the course of the day, he’s had to wipe up shit, piss, half-chewed food, spilled beverages, tears, snot, and drool. He’s spent every minute wrestling the nerve-wracking anxiety that the child in his care will do something damaging and irreversible to herself, while at the same time fighting the urge to disregard every pedagogic principle of the past twenty years and lock her in the broom cupboard.

Not even to punish her. He just wants some fucking _peace_. He’s been stuck in reactive crisis-management mode for hours. He’s not one to say no to a good crisis, but he prefers the kind that involves newspapers and politics rather than toddlers with no fucking sense of self-preservation.

He realised only when he tried (and failed) to brush her teeth that he never changed her out of her pyjamas after getting back from A&E. His oversight became his advantage; at least he didn’t have to wrestle her out of and back into a set of clothes. He’s got her in the blanket nest now. She’s chewing on a pacifier he found between the sheets (blessed treasure) and looks like she might even be tired enough to drop off.

Please, he thinks. Please just fucking do it, fucking _sleep_.

Out loud, he’s singing. It’s not something he’d normally let himself be caught dead doing, especially not _this_ song—it’s Gaelic, he doesn’t understand a word of it, and he’s probably making his ancestors turn in their fucking Highland barrows the way he’s butchering the pronunciation—but nothing else he tried would shut up Gracie’s unhappy crying. She started sometime after dinner and wouldn’t stop, and still had no words to tell him what was wrong.

He’s not sure it was even anything specific. She’s surrounded by strangers who don’t have the first clue what to do with her, and she spent the night in A&E trying not to choke to death. In her place, he’d be crying, too.

The song’s like a fucking druid chant, hypnotic and ethereal, and it’s making her eyelids droop, her wide-eyed stare glaze over. If he has to invoke his grandmother’s pagan fucking forest spirits to cast a knock-out spell on this child, so be it. He just wants her to _sleep_.

Eventually, she does.

He doesn't move for the longest time, afraid to startle her back awake. It's only when her breathing has grown slow and regular that he dares to get up and sneak out of the room.

In the hallway, he slumps against the wall, puts his face in his hands. He hasn't had a day this exhausting since 9/11. All he wants to do is collapse into bed, but Jamie’s in the guest room.

He’s been in the guest room since this morning. He didn’t come downstairs to eat, and Malcolm didn’t hear him use the bathroom. Did he fucking die?

Malcolm swears under his breath and pushes off the wall. He’s reassured when he peers around the door to hear familiar, tiny snoozes. Jamie’s not dead, Jamie’s just taking the longest nap in the history of mankind.

Fair enough, really. He did look like utter shite this morning.

He’s curled up on the side of the bed closer to the wall, blanket pulled up to his ear. Malcolm sits on the edge, stoops down to pull off his socks, and freezes with a groan as his back spasms. Lugging around two stones of toddler all day is taking its toll.

“You okay?”

It’s a nasal, congested croak, and Malcolm sits up, careful not to set off his back again. In the dim hallway light he can see Jamie peering at him from blood-shot, bleary eyes.

“I’m fine.” He scoots back to sit against the headrest. “You sound like shit, though.”

Jamie doesn’t brush him off, and Malcolm concludes he must be feeling horrible. “Where’s Gracie?”

Malcolm jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “Bedroom. She’s asleep.”

“Breathing okay?”

“Her breathing’s fine. Been fine all day.”

Jamie grunts. “What time is it?”

“Nine-ish.”

“Fuck.” He struggles to sit up. “I’ve been asleep all fucking day? Why didn’t you wake me?”

“What for?” Malcolm waves a hand at Jamie. “You’d’ve been useless, the state you’re in.”

“Fucking— fuck.” Jamie rubs his palms over his face, clearly trying to get his head together. “How’d you get on? Did you feed her?”

“I’m not Armand fucking Dorleac; of course I fucking fed her. I also changed her, and got chased around the house like a madman. It was—” — _fine_ , he wants to finish, but that’s too far from the truth even for a flippant brush-off. He shrugs. “She’s survived. So did I. Forget about it.”

Jamie watches him, and he doesn’t look happy at all. He pushes sweaty curls out of his forehead, shakes his head. “Fuck, Malc.”

Malcolm eyes him. “What?”

“How is this harder for you than dealing with fucking top-tier government press relations? Compared to the shit that goes down at Number 10 every day, babysitting should be a walk in the fucking park.”

The statement’s a bit of a non-sequitur, except that there’s a note of frustration to it that’s exceedingly concerning. There’s no reason for Jamie to be frustrated with Malcolm’s lack of babysitting skills, not unless he’s hoping to make use of them more frequently in the future.

Malcolm pulls his knees up, bare feet on the mattress, and digs his toes into the sheets. “Jamie, what the fuck is going on?”

The flicker of evasion in Jamie’s eyes does nothing to reassure him. “ _Nothing_ ’s going on. It’s—ah, fuck.” He leans back, shoulders slumped. Even when healthy, Jamie’s got the body temperature of a nuclear reactor, but right now, the warmth radiating out is a sickly, feverish kind. He looks defeated, stressed, and _guilty_.

“Simon’s not picking her up in a couple of days, is he.”

Jamie sighs, shakes his head. “No.”

“All right.” Malcolm ignores the sharp twist in his gut. “So when _is_ he picking her up?”

“I don’t wanna tell you that.”

“That’s really fucking tough, ‘cos you’re going to have to.” Jamie doesn’t say anything, and the panic in Malcolm’s chest curls tighter. He grinds his teeth together. “Fuck— _Jamie_. Why the fuck wouldn’t you tell me?”

“’cos you do _this_!” Jamie waves a hand at him, eyes wide with exasperation. “You freak the fuck out, and you go straight for a scorched fucking earth strategy when a bit of negotiation would sort things out just as well.” He runs out of air, and turns away to cough into the back of his hand. Once he’s got his breath back, he slumps back against the headrest. “I don’t want to lose all the fucking ground I’ve gained.”

Now they’ve somehow stumbled into a conversation about their _relationship_. Malcolm’s not fucking okay with that; as far as he’s concerned, the less time spent talking about relationships, the better. He knows Jamie disagrees, but Jamie has no sense of self-preservation when it comes to disclosing personal matters. “ _Ground_ , right,” he says, the word wrapped in enough venom to topple an elephant. “Like fucking lying to me about your lease. You think I don’t know you’re not even looking for a new place?”

“I don’t _want_ a new place. I’ve told you; it’s fucking pointless. I spend all my time here, anyway.”

“The _point_ is that I’m a fucking public figure, and I can’t—”

“Oh, not fucking this again.” Jamie’s voice snags, but he swallows and prevents another coughing fit. “If you were really so concerned about your public fucking image, you wouldn’t have let me move in at all. I get my mail delivered here, for fuck’s sake. Anyone who wants to spin this into a gay fucking scandal, they already have plenty of ammunition.” Now he does have to stop and hack up a lung, but Malcolm’s too disconcerted by the anger in Jamie’s voice to use the opportunity to interrupt. Jamie clears his throat, wipes the back of his hand over his mouth. “I get it, Malc, you need your space. But we’ve been at this for near on a decade. You’ll have to make up your mind eventually.”

Malcolm worries his lip with his teeth, watches as Jamie rubs his eyes and rest his head in his hands. He hates it when Jamie does this, slams out a barrage of accusations as if they were mutual fucking knowledge. Jamie’s probably right when he says that Malcolm’s made so many concessions to this relationship, he might as well admit that it’s a serious one—but Malcolm’s never thought about it like that. This thing with Jamie just sort of _happened_. Every concession he’s made, he deliberated on for days; he just never realised that put together, they paint a very clear fucking picture.

“’s been more than a decade,” he says eventually, just to say _something_. “Coming up to eleven years in August.”

“You’re saying we missed our ten-year anniversary?” Jamie laughs. “That’s a fucking shame; we could’ve invited the PM along with all the papers. Would’ve made for a nice big scandal.”

“Jesus.” Malcolm grimaces. “Shut the fuck up.”

Silence settles, and Jamie’s eyes close before long. Malcolm studies his face, the exhausted lines around his eyes and mouth that mar the familiar landscape. He’s got really fucking _used_ to Jamie being around. They met after Malcolm had already decided that a marriage-type relationship wasn’t going to happen to him, and they never talked about what they were doing. They just did it. And then they kept doing it. And now he’s here, sitting next to Jamie in his guest bedroom because the master bedroom’s occupied by a mysterious child that’s suddenly appeared in their life. _Their_ life. Not just Jamie’s.

“Hey.” He brushes his fingers against the back of Jamie’s hand. Jamie grunts, blinks his eyes back open. Malcolm wets his lips. “Simon’s not going to be picking her up at all, is he?”

Jamie groans, slides down until he’s lying facing away, and pulls the blanket up. “Stop it, Malc. I don’t wanna fucking talk about this right now.”

He sounds utterly miserable, and Malcolm knows a lost cause when he sees one. He slides his fingers into sweaty curls. “You hungry at all? You haven’t eaten all day.”

At first, it seems like he’s not going to get an answer, then: “Sorta.”

“All right.” He climbs out of bed. “Stay where you are, I’ll get you something.”

Once again, he’s heading to the kitchen to assemble a meal for someone other than himself. He warms up a can of soup, finds some Lemsip in the medicine cabinet and pours it into a cup of hot water. Almost as an afterthought, he adds a plate of sliced toast that’ll be cold by the time he gets it upstairs. Doesn’t matter. The way Jamie sounded, he can probably taste fuck all, anyway.

Jamie makes faces at the Lemsip, but he drinks it, grimacing and holding his nose all the way. The soup he seems to find more favourable, and he even finishes the toast. By the time the dishes are empty, the paracetamol’s kicked in, and he’s lost some of his pallor.

Malcolm got some tea from downstairs and hands Jamie a cup before getting back into bed with his own in hand. “Better?”

“Yeah.” Jamie wraps his fingers around the warm beverage. “Thanks.”

Silence follows, but Malcolm knows that all he has to do is wait. Eventually, Jamie sighs, rubs a hand over his face. “All right.” He pauses, seems to collect his thoughts. “I’ve accepted legal guardianship over Gracie. She _is_ Simon’s, but, well. Effectively, she’s mine now.”

What he feels isn’t panic, it’s not a knee-jerk white-out of rational thinking. He feels a desperate urge to deny that this is happening, though, to use all of his considerable power to make it un-happen. Jamie’s _his_ , and Jamie wasn’t supposed to come with the responsibility of child care.

He takes a few moments before he answers. “Why?” he asks eventually. “You don’t even have time for a fucking hobby, let alone a _child_.”

“Simon was going to give her to the Church.”

That sounds like something from an 1890s period film. “Come again?”

“His fucking wife’s died, right?” Jamie gets a bit agitated, and pays for it with a few hacking coughs. “They had Gracie, and then Saundra had the accident, and Simon—” Jamie shrugs. “He doesn’t know what to fucking do with a bairn, does he. Not when he’s on his own. And he’s not interested in figuring it out, not when he’s on a mission to drink every fucking scotch barrel in Scotland dry.”

“So he put her in a fucking convent?”

“What— _no_.” Jamie makes a face. “It’s a Catholic children’s home.” He shakes his head. “He just _took_ her there, you know? Took her to the sisters and asked them to take her off his hands. Pissed as fuck, from what I’m guessing between the lines. But it doesn’t work like that anymore, does it, so they told him to give her to the godparents.”

“That’s you.”

“That’s me.”

“What about the rest of your family?”

“No chance.” Jamie shakes his head. “They’d buy Simon a new wife from fucking Thailand before they’d take Gracie off his hands.”

“Jesus.”

“Simon said if I wouldn’t take her, he’d put her in a bulrush basket on the River Clyde. Worked out for Moses, after all.”

“Your brother’s a fucking mental case.”

Jamie shrugs, nods. “He signed her over to me last week. It was _weird_ , Malc. Like buying a fucking car.”

Except a car doesn’t need twenty-four-seven supervision. A car doesn’t shit its pants, and if you total it, the loss is monetary—still a blow, but it’s not a person. It’s not a small, tiny, fragile _human being_.

Jesus Christ. He feels like he’s going to throw up.

“I’ve got to think.” He’s not going for a scorched earth strategy, no matter how strong an urge he feels to do just that. But he needs to _think_ , so he gets out of bed, finds his socks and shoes.

Jamie’s watching him. “What’s that mean, Malc?”

“It means I’ve got to fucking think about this!” He shoves his feet into his shoes, makes an effort to keep his voice down. “I’m still allowed to do that, right?”

“’course.”

Jamie doesn’t look happy about it, though. That’s fucking tough. Malcolm grabs the door handle, glances over his shoulder. “Watch your child while I’m gone; I won’t be around to keep an eye on her for you.”

It comes out harsher than he really meant it, but there’s no time to fix that. He takes the stairs down, grabs his coat, and heads outside into the cool autumn air.

\------

Liverpool Road depresses with its Victorian pomp, so Malcolm swerves sideways into the dark gloom of the side streets. Iron-cast fences and cobblestone lead through narrow gaps between brownstones, occasionally interrupted by patches of green. He’s heading south, walking at a brisk pace as if trying to outrun something.

There’s very little ‘as if’ about it, really. He said he needed to think, but what he really needs to do is _move_ , shake the suffocating feeling of being trapped between two choices, both of which feel nothing short of apocalyptic.

Get rid of the child, lose Jamie. Keep Jamie, accept that Jamie now comes with a toddler. He supposes his job is to figure out which one is the lesser evil; there’s just the problem that he’s terrified of the answer either way. Both evils sound _really bad_.

Angel Station comes up, and with it the noisy racket of Pentonville. He flags down a cab, glad for the late hour as they easily make their way through London traffic. The doorman at Number 10 waves him through; it’s not the first time he’s showing up here late at night.

The floor his office is on is deserted, but he still closes the door, sits at the desk with his palms spread on the blotter. It’s quiet. The way Number 10’s tucked away against St. James’s Park, at night it’s almost as if it weren’t located at the centre of Europe’s biggest metropolis.

He opens a drawer, pulls out the contact list of the press department staff. It’s a big department; he’s got more people working for him than most MPs. Jamie’s right at the top among the Senior Press Officers. The list still shows his old address; Malcolm’s been stalling Sam’s attempts at updating it.

He imagines doing this job without Jamie. Jamie’s been his second-in-command _forever_ ; even back at the paper, before Malcolm took the Party job, Jamie was there. He wonders if Jamie even considered that there’s no way he’s going to keep his job. Not as a single parent.

That’s what he’s going to be, a single parent. Malcolm _may_ be able to get used to sharing the house with a toddler, but he’s never going to be a parent. That’s not in him. Jamie has to know that.

His chest contracts as he finishes that thought and realises that the decision’s already been made. Jamie’s going to disappear out of Malcolm’s working life. Malcolm doesn’t _have_ much of a life besides that to speak of.

He swears under his breath, reaches for pen and notepad, and starts to write.

\------

It’s the early hours of Saturday morning when he finishes, eyelids heavy, throat clenched in a perpetual yawn. He drops the pen, stumbles over to the sofa, and falls asleep curled up under his coat.

It’s not exactly comfortable, so he’s up again five hours later. London’s drizzly and grey, single rays of morning sunlight only just breaking through the clouds as he makes his way to Tower Hamlets. It’s not the first time he’s got towed, and he’s in luck—the clerk at the car pound recognises him. He pays up, produces the keys that are still in his coat pocket, and drives Jamie’s car through the big metal gates and up north back to Islington.

Perhaps he’ll be able to pass it off as a peace offer, or something.

If he was half-hoping that Jamie would still be asleep, he’s disappointed. It’s just gone half eight, but Jamie’s already on the sofa, tucked under a blanket as Gracie’s futzing around on the carpet stacking blocks. He looks marginally less awful than he did last night, but the squint that Malcolm gets as he enters is wary to say the least.

“Morning.”

“Morning.” Malcolm sits in the armchair, eyes Gracie as she makes her tower topple over with one block too many. “Hey, Gracie.”

She looks up and laughs. Apparently she does know her name.

“How’re you feeling?”

Jamie shrugs, clears his throat. “Better. Just one of those one-day things, I guess.” He narrows his eyes. “You done your thinking?”

Straight to business, as always. Malcolm rubs the heel of his hand into one eye. “Yeah. I have.”

“All right.” Jamie waits, but not for long. “Are you going to tell me, or are we playing a fucking early morning pub quiz?”

“Jesus. All right.” He takes a deep breath, takes the plunge. “I’m not chucking you out.”

Jamie’s shoulders sag the tiniest bit, but his frown stays in place. “Just me?”

“You _and_ her. You’re a package deal now, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay. So. You can stay. Both of you.” He thinks back over the notes he took in the office, endless lists of hypothetical consequences to this decision. By one a.m., he’d narrowed it down to ten significant key scenarios, by two a.m., he’d thrown it all out and dismissed it as unpredictable. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. “We’ll turn the guest room into a room for her. It’s big enough, she can live in it until—well, however long she needs to. If you want an office or something, we can clear out the small room upstairs. I’m just using it as a cupboard right now, most of the stuff can go in the bin, anyway.” He pauses, wets his lips. “The downstairs office is fucking off-limits. For both of you. Hic sunt dracones, all right? You’re not to enter.”

“No problem.” Jamie holds up his palms, smirking. He looks like he’s already fucking won. “The office is all yours.”

“You bet it fucking is.” He swallows, kneads his fingers hard enough so they’d be cracking if years of bad-habit-indulgence hadn’t ruined his joints. “I’m not going to be your co-parent. I’ll share this house, and I’ll help out if you need me to, but I’m not going to be anyone’s fucking dad. All right?”

Jamie’s expression goes back to wary. “I don’t want her growing up feeling like she’s not welcome.”

“I’m not saying that.” One knuckle does crack, sends dull pain coursing along the back of his hand. “I’m not saying she’s not welcome. But I don’t have time to be a parent, and I’m not going to do some botched-up fucking job of it just because I can’t admit that. I wasn’t planning for kids in my life for a reason, Jamie.”

Jamie’s still frowning, but now it’s more confused than anything. “So what are you going to be to her?”

“I don’t fucking know.” He watches as Gracie, oblivious to the tension in the room, sorts her building blocks into piles of colour. “Live-in uncle, I suppose.” He doesn’t mind being an uncle. He’s done it before, at least.

“All right.” Jamie purses his lips, nods. “Fair. I can live with that.”

A stretch of silence follows, and Jamie’s looking like they’ve already gone over it all, smiling fondly at what Malcolm supposes could rightfully be called his fucking daughter. But they haven’t talked about the biggest one yet, the one that’s weighing like a heavy rock at the bottom of Malcolm’s gut.

“What’re you planning to do about your job?”

Jamie looks over. He’s all wide-eyed innocence, but he _always_ is. That’s just his face. Malcolm knows him well enough to spot the underlying hint of guilt. “I was going to give notice,” he says. “I can’t be in Number 10 and with Gracie at the same time. And working from home, you know yourself how fucking well that worked out.”

It’s confirmation of what Malcolm already expected, but it doesn’t make him feel any better about it. “What are you going to do instead?”

“Freelance, I suppose.” Jamie shrugs. “Perhaps I can get a column somewhere. It’s easier with email now, innit? I could telecommute for the _Herald_.”

Malcolm snorts, nods. “Probably could.”

He doesn’t say anything more, and Jamie’s rising confusion is palpable. Of course the fucking prick never thought about what this would mean for Malcolm. Fucking twat. “You’re going to be irreplaceable on the team.” He narrows his eyes. “You know that, right?”

“Come off it.” Jamie shifts. “Frank’s good, he can do my job just as well.”

“He fucking can’t. I don’t trust him the way I trust you.”

Jamie opens his mouth, closes it. Malcolm’s never seen anyone look so fucking shifty. He leans forward, points a finger at Gracie. “You’re going to get her old enough for school, and then you’re coming back. Do you hear me? I’ll make do for a few years, and I’ll even give you part time after. But you don’t go fucking swanning off like that and leave me holding the fort on my own. I _need_ you.”

Jamie’s staring. He looks like he’s about to make a joke of it, but Malcolm pre-empts that. “I said, do you fucking _hear_ me?”

“All right, _yes_.” Jamie widens his eyes. “I fucking hear you, Malc. All right. I’ll come back.”

“Good.” He’s worked himself up now, which is _good_ , because he’s not done. He jumps to his feet, paces a few steps. “Another thing.” Now even Gracie’s noticed something’s up, stares at him, building blocks forgotten. “No more fucking lying, all right? No more ‘my fucking lease ran out’ and ‘oh, it’s just going to be for a week’. No more of that, not ever.” He wets his lips, presses on, no matter how fucking startled Jamie looks. “I’m not a fucking idiot, and you’re a fucking shit liar. The only reason I let you get away with it is because I know you’ll tell me eventually, but I’m done with that. You’ve got something you don’t want to tell me, you deal with it, and you tell me anyway. All right?”

Jamie’s eyes narrow; he’s going from startled to pissed off. “Are you going to be fucking reasonable about it? I don’t fucking lie to you because it’s fun, you know.”

“No, I fucking know!” His voice is raised, but that’s fucking appropriate. This is important. “You do it because you don’t like having these types of conversation. Well, guess what, neither do I, but looks like we’re both just going to have to suck it up, right?”

“Right!” Jamie’s shouting, too, a single syllable of belligerent consent that echoes in the sitting room and creates an aftertaste of embarrassment. Malcolm wets his lips, stares him down, until Jamie glances over at Gracie.

She’s been watching them with wide eyes as if waiting for her cue. With the room’s attention on her, she shouts a loud “No!”, grabs a red block, and hurls it at Malcolm.

The sharp edge hits him in the shin. Pain explodes in his leg, and he stumbles. “ _Fuck_!”

“Gracie!” Jamie’s up off the sofa, scoops her up and gives her an appalled frown. “We don’t fucking do that, all right? We don’t throw blocks at Malcolm.” He shoots him a glare from the corner of his eyes. “Not even when he deserves it.”

“Oh, great fucking job child-raising. She’ll end up the youngest fucking delinquent London’s ever seen.”

“Malcolm!”

That’s Gracie. It’s loud, overjoyed, and sounds more like ‘acorn’ than his name, but by the way she’s waving her arms at him and smiling, it’s pretty clear what she meant to say.

It shouldn’t be this fucking flattering, but there you are.

“That’s my name, yes.”

“Malcolm! Malcolm!” Excited to have discovered a new way to communicate, she leans so far out of Jamie’s grip that Jamie almost drops her.

“Malc, will you—fucking take her, all right?”

He hesitates for a second, but then he grabs her and heaves her up to sit against his waist.

What the fuck else is he gonna do?


	3. Epilogue - 4 Years Later

“Malcolm, I’m very concerned, very concerned indeed. You assured me it wouldn’t break, and now it looks like it’s very much broken.”

“It’s not broken.” He’s running, tearing down the street from Richmond Terrace to Number 10. This wasn’t supposed to happen anymore; now that Jamie’s back, he was supposed to have someone actually competent on site to manage the press room team. But Jamie’s fucking part time, isn’t he, and of course this is happening when Jamie’s not in. “It’s not fucking broken _yet_. I’m just—”

There’s a beep, and he swears under his breath. “I’ve got to call you back, Julius, I’ve got the _Mail_ on the other line.”

“ _Mal_ colm—”

He cuts Julius off mid-protest, flails to try and keep the stack of paper under his arm from scattering as he manipulates the phone’s buttons mid-run. He’d really much rather keep talking to Julius, but avoidance rarely works with the press. “Tucker.”

“Malcolm,” and of course it’s Angela, it always is. “It does pay off to have your direct line; would your administration like to give a statement on the PM story we’ll be running?”

“Fuck the administration, I’ll give you my personal statement, which is that your story is complete fucking bollocks and you running with it is a cock-up you’ll choke on when I’m through with you.” He trips as he takes the steps up to Number 10, catches himself on the fence, and fucking drops his papers after all. “Unless you’ve got a fucking _lab report_ that shows the PM’s got chlamydia, this is going to be the last story you’ll ever write.”

“So you’re confirming she’s got it?”

“What?” He almost drops his papers again right after scooping them up. “ _No_! I’m not fucking confirming anything. Repeat after me, the PM does not have chlamydia, or any other fucking STD. All right?” The stairs in Number 10 are flat enough to take them three at a time, so he does, holds his breath to keep himself from getting too wheezy. “Where’d you get the idea, anyway? Did it just come to you in the fucking shower? Are you Britain’s equivalent of the Delphi oracle, printing whatever thought comes to you first in the fucking morning?”

“My source would like to remain anonymous.”

“Of course he would.” He shoulders open the press room door, immediately sets his team in motion with some pointed hand waves. “Listen, Angela, I know why you’re fucking doing this. If you think this’ll get you that exclusive that you’re after, let me tell you, I’ve dealt with much scarier fuckers than you much more harshly. Spike the STD nonsense, and we’ll never speak of this again. Last chance.”

The silence at the other end is as good as confirmation that his instincts were right. Relief churns in his gut; they were never going to run with the STD thing. It’s a fucking blackmail attempt. Another one.

“You know it’d be in your interest to give us the exclusive.” He can appreciate that Angela at least isn’t trying to deny anything. “We’ve got so much evidence piled up, all you’d be doing is setting things straight.” She says it, suppresses a chuckle. “As it were.”

“Oh, you’re fucking hilarious, aren’t you.” He gestures at Frank to get on the phone, mouths the letters I-T-N at him in a way he hopes is obvious enough even for that dimwit. “If you’ve got so much evidence, why aren’t you running with it? Let me guess, because it’s not fucking news anymore, am I right?” There’s more silence, and he’s already beginning to feel like he’s won this one. “Yeah, I’m fucking right. Everyone’s run with _some_ version of Mr and Mr Tucker and their bundle of joy, the only thing that’d make it news now is an exclusive.”

“Okay,” she says, and sounds like she’s gritting her teeth. “But why not, Malcolm? Why refuse to say _anything_? Would you rather have everyone speculating?”

“I’d rather not be threatened with half-arsed fucking blackmail attempts. Are you going to spike it?”

“It doesn’t have to be a negative sort of—”

“Are you going to spike the fucking story, or am I going to have to come over there and do it myself?”

“ _Fine_.” She sounds like she only does when she knows she’s lost, a vicious fucking hiss. “I'll spike it. But you know, Malcolm, if you _are_ a member of the LGBT community, don’t you feel you owe it to them to make a statement? You’re in top-tier politics, you’d be exceptional representation—”

“Fuck off, darling.” He hangs up, then starts shouting at everyone who’s not on the phone yet. Call every news outlet, make sure they haven’t got wind, make sure they’re not planning to run with it, make sure they know it’s got spiked. It’s a clean-up job, but it’s no less important than every other part of the work.

He’s about to ring his own contacts when his phone flashes a familiar number. He rolls his eyes, accepts the call. “Jamie, I’m sort of in the middle of something—”

“All right, Malc, but she’s lost Captain Awesome and she’s not happy. When’ll you be home?”

“Whenever I’ve cleaned up this most recent mess.” He can hear unhappy shouting in the background. “What do you mean, she’s lost him?”

“I don’t fucking know. She had him in the car, until she didn’t. Knowing her, she probably threw him out the fucking window.”

Malcolm runs a hand over his face. “Have you checked the seat pocket?”

Jamie’s reply takes a while. There’s some shuffling, and when Jamie speaks, he sounds stumped. “How’d you know that’s where he’d be?”

“He’s a fucking stuffed kangaroo, Jamie. He goes in the pouch.”

“Right.” There’s the clatter of a door, Jamie’s muffled voice, and the shouting stops. A moment later, Jamie’s back. “Fucking child whisperer; how d’you know shit like this?”

“She told me.” She’s so much easier to manage now that she can fucking _speak_. “I’ve got to go; I’ve got the equivalent of a sewage truck unloading in Parliament to clean up.”

“All right. See you later.” And then, absentmindedly, because that’s apparently how they do it these days: “Love you.”

Malcolm glances around at his team frantically phoning all of Britain’s news outlets. They’re thoroughly distracted.

“Yeah. Me too. See you later.”


End file.
